In 1997, Japan was at the forefront of climate action. Today, it’s a laggard hyper-actively financing coal in Asia. Just as bad, it has ambitions to build 40 new coal-fired power plants at home, on top of 100 existing ones.

With Europe working toward minimum cuts of 40% in greenhouse gas emissions (from 1990 levels) by 2030 and China aiming for non-fossil power to account for more than 50% of total power generation by the same date, Japan needs to sharpen up its act or risk getting left behind in terms of efficiency and technology, as well as the environment.

Fortunately, many of the country’s largest corporations are pursuing a low-carbon future.

Sustainable construction could be a solution to India’s plastic waste crisis.

In India, 15,000 tonnes of plastic are dumped in the streets everyday due to unsuitable recycling alternatives But guess what? India could construct buildings from recycled plastic and solve its plastics crisis

The study, in partnership with colleagues from Goa Engineering College India, demonstrated that replacing 10 per cent of sand in concrete with plastic waste could simultaneously solve a national sand shortage and reduce the growing amounts of rubbish on the streets.

A study forecasts that in the absence of interventions, groundwater contribution to Ganga river’s water flow would continue diminishing in the summer for the next 30 years.

The dwindling of Ganga river would severely affect water available for surface water irrigation, with potential future decline in food production. This decline in river flow also has implications for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

Experts, not associated with the study, also pointed to the combined blow of surface and groundwater misuse has beleaguered the Ganga river basin. Agricultural inefficiency is a chink in the chain, they say, when it comes to sustainable water use.

Opinion: Why Are Himalayan and North Eastern States staring down the barrel of a water crisis?

The recent NITI Aayog’s recent report titled, ‘Composite Water Management Index’ (CWMI)’ showed a dismal performance of the Himalayan and North Eastern states on water use and conservation. Why are Himalayan and North Eastern states staring down the barrel of a water crisis? WaterAid India’s Nirma Bora tries to answer in this article in NDTV.

Although they are often the actual cultivators, the lack of land rights among women farmers in Odisha has resulted in chronic distress because they are unable to get government loans or compensation over crop loss.

“They’re easy to overlook, and often hard to find, but urban trees are every bit as important to cities as water, sewer and transportation systems.”

WORLD

Heads of state must intervene to fix climate process

Former UN climate chief Yvo De Boer says trust underpinning global negotiations can only be restored at the highest political level. He says climate action is faltering because of “the perception that rich nations have not met their ‘obligations’”

“We cannot build a tower of ambition on a bedrock of broken promises,” he says, and outlines his views on what needs to be done for trust to be rebuilt.

The UN climate chief Patricia Espinosa wrote to governments on Thursday to let them know that the Katowice COP24 would start a day earlier than scheduled – on 2 December. “An early opening of the session will provide an opportunity to make the best use of the time available to finalize negotiations,”

One of the key findings in an upcoming report from the UN science panel, IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is worrying climate spin doctors in Bangkok.

The IPCC will publish a special report in October on the tougher 1.50C temperature target, which will set the tone for Katowice.

A key question is: what level of emissions will tip the world over the 1.50C threshold? There is a range of estimates of that “carbon budget” and the judgement of which to foreground has big political implications. As Climate Home News reported, that choice changed between the first and second drafts, with no explanation.

If the scientists pick a low number, it kills vulnerable communities’ hopes of staying within the safer limit. If they go high, it implies the 20C outer edge of ambition is achievable without further effort – not an easy message.

(Climate Home News email bulletin of 6th September)

Armed with faded copies, four diplomats write the rules of the Paris climate deal

5°C is the temperature increase above pre-industrial levels we are heading for if we follow our path of limited or no climate policy. 2°C is the temperature increase above pre-industrial levels that most countries around the world have agreed would prevent dangerous climate change.

There will be climate impacts at 2°C, but we believe we can manage them. This journey will describe how the energy system must change if we go from 5°C to 2°C.

So is getting to 2°C feasible?

– Yes, says Peters.

– But only in the models.

The models that take us to a world where global warming is limited to 2°C, are much too optimistic, according to Glen Peters at CICERO (Center for International Climate Research).

You’ve heard of outsourced jobs, but outsourced pollution? It’s real, and tough to tally up

Over the past decade, both the United States and Europe have made major strides in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions at home. That trend is often held up as a sign of progress in the fight against climate change.

But those efforts look a lot less impressive once you take trade into account. Many wealthy countries have effectively “outsourced” a big chunk of their carbon pollution overseas, by importing more steel, cement and other goods from factories in China and other places, rather than producing it domestically.

…Because of this, many people are nervous when talking about extreme weather events in a climate context. But a changing climate can “load the dice” on weather, making certain kinds of extreme event more likely. For example: the amount of water vapor that the atmosphere can hold increases with temperature. Heat it up by 1° F, and the moisture content increases by about 3 percent. The result? More intense rainstorms. Similarly, heat waves happen more often when the planet as a whole gets warmer.

Arctic sea ice isn’t just threatened by the melting of ice around its edges, a new study has found: Warmer water that originated hundreds of miles away has penetrated deep into the interior of the Arctic.

That “archived” heat, currently trapped below the surface, has the potential to melt the region’s entire sea-ice pack if it reaches the surface, researchers say.

Mismanaged plastic waste is defined as “plastic that is either littered or inadequately disposed. Inadequately disposed waste is not formally managed and includes disposal in dumps or open, uncontrolled landfills, where it is not fully contained. Mismanaged waste could eventually enter the ocean via inland waterways, wastewater outflows, and transport by wind or tides.”

From 1950-2015 the world produced ~8.3 billion tonnes of plastics. Where did it go?

In large parts of the subcontinent where floods or droughts are annual or recurring events, people in rural areas have evolved location-specific strategies to deal with the disasters and unusual weather.

From large-scale dam-building to unbridled resource-exploitation, human activity is causing serious damage to Himalayan ecosystems. While all the countries in the region are culpable to some extent, none is doing as much harm as China.

Flash floods and glacier melting and glacial lakes can cause Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) that carry moraines to the lower part of the river and the river bed becomes shallow. Stone, mud and sand cover a vast area along the river. The areas covered by moraine and sand along the Brahmaputra River from Tibet to Assam are expanding every year.

“I do believe that Americans, and we who are policymakers in all branches of government, should be concerned about mounting evidence that indicates that something is happening.” — John McCain discussing climate change.

The climate opinion map, published earlier this month, depicts estimates of the percentage of Americans, aged 25 and over, who have particular beliefs, attitudes and policy preferences on global warming. The information comes from a large national survey dataset of 22,000 people which was collected between 2008 and 2018.

A new World Bank report, South Asia’s Hotspots, finds that average temperatures in the region have increased in the last sixty years and will continue rising. Eight hundred million South Asians are at risk to see their standards of living and incomes decline as rising temperatures and more erratic rainfalls will cut down crop yields, make water more scare, and push more people away from their homes to seek safer places.

“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.”

“All economic activity is dependent upon that environment and its underlying resource base of forests, water, air, soil, and minerals. When the environment is finally forced to file for bankruptcy because its resource base has been polluted, degraded, dissipated, and irretrievably compromised, the economy goes into bankruptcy with it.”

A country is considered to be suffering from water scarcity when availability is less than 10 lakh (1 million) litres per capita per year. Discuss the issue at Global Water Security Conference. Register for Conference –

Raghunath Bartade watched helplessly as his brother was dragged off the sand-mining boat, his leg tangled in the anchor rope and his arms flailing as he sank into the murky creek near Mumbai.

Moments earlier, Raghunath and Babban Bartade had been dredging sand by hand from the bottom of the creek — an often deadly trade that fuels India’s booming construction industry, and continues despite an official crackdown.

Preliminary report of a unique study on climate inventory by the Sikkim govt. has found the state to be carbon-neutral. Sikkim’s forests sequester more carbon than state’s total carbon emissions. But then, the dense coverage of forests in Sikkim is well known. Final report in 6 months.

After successfully commissioning India’s first real-time landslide warning system in Kerala’s Western Ghats, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham is now readying the second installation in Sikkim to guard against rainfall-induced landslides in the Sikkim-Darjeeling belt. The project is jointly funded by the Ministry of Earth Sciences and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham for which the Union ministry had granted Rs. 5 crore.

It will monitor a densely populated area spanning 150 acres around the Chandmari village in Sikkim’s Gangtok area. This area has seen landslides in the past, the first one being reported in 1997.

ITANAGAR, Aug 16 – Strictly sticking to the slogan ‘perform or perish’, the Arunachal Pradesh Government has decided to terminate 100 more hydroelectric projects allotted to various private developers, days after terminating 15 project with a total generating capacity of 1,586.4 MW of power.

“We have taken a bold decision to terminate those hydropower projects where the performance is very poor. We have decided to hand such projects over to the PSUs as per mutual terms and conditions. Till date we have cancelled 15 hydropower projects and 100 more hydroelectric projects are in the process of termination,” disclosed Chief Minister Pema Khandu, in his Independence Day address at the Indira Gandhi Park here on Wednesday.

A dammed history of the Kosi in Bihar. 3 part series on the successful/unsuccessful attempts at taming the transboundary river. Whether mindful of natural designs or not is a whole discussion in itself.

Part 2 – While most Nepalese blame the 2008 breach on India, Nepal itself has started to construct a massive amount of embankments throughout the country, these enjoy popularity across various social groups, but it is unclear if they are a lasting good.

Part 3 – The heavy sediment load in the Koshi remains one of its biggest challenges, and while a number of options have been put forward – from check dams to hydropower projects – India and Nepal remain wedded to the idea of embankments

For a country living in a ‘ship-to-mouth’ existence when food came directly from the ship to feed the hungry millions, India’s turnaround in the past 71 years to achieve food self-sufficiency remains the cornerstone of global history. For a country that was born in the backdrop of the Great Bengal Famine in 1943, to be saddled with unmanageable food surpluses – food grains, pulses and milk — in the past two years explains the long strides taken to accomplish what was once considered to be mission impossible…

…The decline in farm incomes explains the reasons behind the growing farm unrest. In the five years period – between 2011-12 and 2015-16 – the average farm incomes had risen by less than half a percent every year, at 0.44 per cent to be exact, says a study by Niti Aayog. According to another report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), farm output prices have remained frozen for two decades. Farmers have been deliberately paid 15 per cent less so as to ensure that the food inflation remain under control. As if this is not enough, Economic Survey 2016 tells us that the average farm family incomes in 17 States of India, or roughly half the country, average to Rs 20,000 a year. This means less than Rs 1,700 a month.

In his ruling, the judge made clear that “anthropogenic climate change caused by increased greenhouse gas emissions poses severe threats.” However, the state’s constitution doesn’t include a right to a clean environment, he wrote.

The state judge wrote that climate change poses urgent threats, but that it should be solved by the executive and legislative branches, not the courts.

What is FAO fish’s Global Record is a repository of vessels involved in fishing operations. What does it do? Makes data public to help fight Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing. What do we need? States’ commitment to share comprehensive and up-to-date information.

On the occasion of World Honeybee Day, celebrated every year on the third Saturday of August, it is significant to note that India is the world’s sixth largest producer of honey. Over 2.5 lakh farmers in India are involved in beekeeping or ‘apiculture’ as a business, as per the data of the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC).

…In fact, experts like Dr. Shantanu Jha, Professor, Agricultural Entomology, of the Bidhan Chandra Krishi Vishwavidyalaya in West Bengal say that India has potential to maintain least 20 crore (200 million) bee colonies, which could provide employment to 215 lakh people. However, the current reality of the beekeeping or apiculture industry in India is a far cry from this. According to the data of the KVIC, India at present has only 25 lakh (2. 5 million) bee colonies. So far, only 1.25 per cent of the potential has been realised.

Challenges of apiculture

The reason for the divergence between potential and reality is rooted in several challenges that apiculture faces in India. As the majority of those involved in beekeeping are small and marginal farmers they lack the capacity to invest in marketing infrastructure. Second, the beekeepers often lack training in managing their bees. Third, beekeepers in rural areas find it difficult to reach consumers beyond their village.

Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR), in light of the above potential and the challenges, has taken steps in Jharkhand to promote apiculture and thereby boost livelihoods and incomes of the local community.

One such beneficiary under the programme is Sudarshan Besra (35), who practices beekeeping in Sidhu Karanjtoli village in Jharkhand’s Murhu block. He narrates his story to us:

He says “My father practiced beekeeping as a profession and I too continued this tradition, but I had only 20 boxes and lacked know-how in the technical aspects of beekeeping. The boxes are used for breeding bees. Four years ago in 2014, I received some training in beekeeping from a Ranchi-based non-governmental organisation. This inspired me to expand my beekeeping business. However, for this I needed more boxes so that I could breed more bees. In February 2018, when I came to know that WOTR provided assistance to farmers who wished to take up apiculture, I requested assistance in this regard. It was a great help when WOTR gave me 103 boxes to help in this regard. Each box costs around Rs. 2,500 of which I had to contribute Rs. 250 per box. Besides, one of my sisters also received training from WOTR in making candles from bees wax.”

“Trees are the Earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven”

Rabindranath Tagore

In urban planning, one deals with redevelopment of existing areas and new urbanisation around the periphery of the existing town or city.

In the former, planners using the principle of densification, aim to knock down existing structures, and create new structures which increase the population density in the area. This redevelopment is responsible for clearing existing trees and greenery. This reflects bad planning.

In new urbanisation, one can use satellite imaging for appropriate zoning of your constructions so as to mitigate loss of valuable fertile soil and green cover. This minimises the impact of emissions which contribute to global warming. Satellite imaging is a vital tool for urban planning.

Densification involves costs and benefits which have to evaluated sensibly.

Planning densification without sacrificing vital green cover should be the guiding light. Unfortunately this did not happen in the Sarojini Nagar and Kidwai Nagar redevelopments undertaken by NBCC (India) Limited.

Every redevelopment which involves densification at the cost of green cover in a congested city is a clear no, no…as it aims at one level to giving scarce real estate in the city to outsiders which is incorrect as the driving force is profiteering from real estate sacrificing green cover.

In a city like Delhi, where air quality is poor, reduction in existing green cover impacts air quality for all citizens. The cost of this on public health is huge.

What more is there to add…Delhi has woken up to the wisdom of green cover late. The City is still not willing to regulate vehicles on the basis of carrying capacity of the cities roads.

The capricious nature of groundwater has resulted in so much exploitation and overuse that we now have a consistent crisis. Presenting a roadmap for groundwater governance and information transparency using technology.

Kolleru is India’s largest fresh water lakes at over 90,000 hectares. It hosts upto 189 species of birds, which arrive in the thousands each year – some coming from as far as Siberia.

Unrestricted aquaculture turned the ecosystem into a prawn-only parade, forcing the water to turn saline. The prawns required manure to grow, and this seeped into the water – turning it into a nutrient soup that supported algae but smothered other life forms. Locals started buying their water in sachets as non-locals made a killing. Soon enough, even the prawns raised here became toxic.

Nearly 16.3 crores of India’s population of 130 crores lack access to clean water close to home – the most of any country in the world, according to a report this year by the Britain-based charity Water Aid.

On an average, a rural woman walks 5 kilometres to 20 kilometres (3-12 miles) a day just to fetch water, according to estimates by campaigners.

Apart from the physical strain of collecting water, women also suffer from the emotional stress of managing with little water, and maintaining menstrual hygiene, said Ranjana Kumari, Director of Advocacy, Centre for Social Research.

The burden is greater with the Clean India Mission, which aims to end open defecation in rural areas by installing toilets.

“But many of (the toilets) do not have running water, leaving the additional task of getting water for them to women,” she said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has acknowledged the severity of the water crisis and promised more resources to tackle it, including cleaning up the Ganges river, which makes up 40 percent of total replenishable groundwater resources.

There is little time: by 2030, water demand is projected to be double the supply, implying severe scarcity for hundreds of millions.

“Demand is increasing, access is getting more difficult, yet the infrastructure has not improved,” Kumari said.

How India Could Cut Irrigation Water By 33% – And Reduce Anaemia, Zinc Deficiency

India could reduce the water it uses for irrigation by a third and simultaneously address a persistent malnutrition problem, if it replaced its rice crop with more nutritious and less thirsty cereals, a study of irrigation-water use over 43 years has found.

Rice, which consumes the most water by tonne of output while delivering the least nutrients–iron, zinc and fibre–could be replaced with less thirsty and more nutritious maize, ragi (finger millet), bajra (pearl millet) or jowar (sorghum). To reap these benefits, however,

India must replace rice and wheat with healthier alternative cereals in its public distribution system, which provides subsidised food grain to the poor, the study said.

An information center in Nuh district (of Haryana state) that lags in economic and social development has created awareness about government schemes and entitlements, and has empowered villagers to claim their rights

Earth at risk of entering ‘hothouse’ state from which there is no return, scientists warn climate (change) scientists ‘In the context of the summer of 2018, this is definitely not a case of crying wolf… the wolves are now in sight’.

For 75-year-old Tsering Angdo, today’s Ladakh is entirely different from the world of his childhood in the cold Himalayan desert. Earlier, according to Angdo and his fellow Ladakhis, water from the melting snow and glaciers would be enough to cater to the needs of the locals. But, with lower snowfall and warmer summers, some of the glaciers have vanished altogether, while others are melting faster than before. This is happening at a time when the region has become extremely popular with Indian tourists, thanks to some recent Bollywood movies.

“Now, we get a lot of domestic tourists. And the number of tourists is increasing every year. There has to be a limit,” Angdo observes though he doesn’t know what the limit could be. “We have started facing severe water scarcity in Leh because this place gets flooded with tourists”. “The government and the experts should determine how many tourists should come to Leh.” Angdo hopes Ladakh will not be spoiled like other tourist places in the Himalayas, such as Manali and Shimla.

The Indus River has immense hydropower potential which has mostly remained untapped. The geographic location of the state of Jammu and Kashmir gives it a unique advantage to harness hydropower from the three major rivers of the Indus.

The primary reason why the state has been unable to use its water resources for bridging its energy deficit is lack of finances.

Any water infrastructure development on the Indus River in the state is guided by the Indus Waters Treaty signed between India and Pakistan in 1960 with the World Bank as the guarantor. The treaty reserves the western rivers; the Jhelum, Chenab, and Indus for Pakistan except for specific use by India for various purposes including irrigation, domestic use, run-of-river hydropower generation and other non-consumptive uses subject to the conditions of design, water storage and other features clearly set out in the treaty

Usually established by the community, micro-hydropower projects (MHPs) work more or less like the big power corporations that supply power to cities. Like them, the MHPs come with their own power generation source and operate autonomously.

They can typically generate between five to 100 kilowatts (KW) of power. Most MHPs have a shelf life of up to 20 years. This can be extended if they are properly serviced, maintained and operated.

MHPs low cost, near-zero emissions, and ability to be dispatched quickly to meet peak electricity demand have made them a valuable renewable energy source worldwide.

But installing an MHP is far easier than ensuring its smooth running. Firstly, as water flows decrease in winter so does electricity generation, finally coming to a complete halt during the peak winter. Secondly, repairing broken MHP means downtime because of transporting heavy parts to workshops elsewhere. The third down side of the MHPs is their vulnerability to extreme weather events like floods.

This is based on 600 km long KEN YATRA in three different phases by the two authors from South Asian Network of Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) and Veditum (another NGO) respectively.

We tried tracing the river on a map using satellite data for cues, moving upstream from an established point of identity: Chilla ghat, the confluence of the Ken with the Yamuna in Uttar Pradesh. However, this exercise proved difficult and led us astray multiple times, especially in the upper catchment area. It was only later, when walking along the river, did we realise that this was because almost all of Ken’s tributaries have a larger discharge than the Ken itself.

Everyday conversations often miss out on the important role of tributaries and groundwater as vital components of a river’s health.

This has assumed significance when the Government of India was trying to expedite the construction of multiple small and large dams in the Ganga basin, including the proposed Daudhan dam on the Ken, a part of the Ken-Betwa river interlinking project.

Our walk in the upper regions of the river were largely through dried stretches, where we would regularly come across bridges and check dams with no water to be found. We also noticed the sudden appearance of pools of water in the same dry channel, sometimes so large as to be confusing. Although we couldn’t understand how the pools had come to be, the locals were familiar with them as well as had names.

These pools are called dabra, dabri or dabran, depending on their size and number. We were told that these pools were filled by underground springs, a phenomenon we had only read about until then. This was river science in action, the relationship between groundwater and rivers playing out in front of our eyes. Captured surface water that had filtered through layers of earth over time was now feeding the river, sustaining life when people were thinking about the imminent summer.

In some places, these springs were venerated, protected to the extent that their water could be used only if it overflowed. In other places, the pools had tens of pipes jutting out like tentacles, sucking out all that the ground could provide. Changing cropping patterns (from millets to relatively water-intensive crops like wheat and paddy) and the demand for higher acreage under cultivation (i.e. cutting down of old forests and occupying scrub lands) makes this an alarming situation because it will further stress aquifers that seem to have already reached their breaking point.

However, the same people who had had multiple points of view about protecting the river didn’t know nearly enough about the proposed Ken-Betwa river-linking project, which if approved would have a drastic effect on riparian communities.

If you could create a giant cube and pack into it all the drinking water in the world, that cube would fit nicely into the city of Bangalore. All of the waters in the world’s rivers, lakes, and wetlands are only a fraction of that, fitting inside a cube with a side of only 13 km.

As temperatures rise, Earth’s soil is ‘breathing’ more heavily. This ‘soil respiration’ process releases 5 times more CO2 than human activity and is up 1.2% between 1990 and 2014, further warming the planet.

While that may not seem like a big change, such an increase on a global scale, in a relatively short period of time in Earth history, is massive.

On 16th July, the European Union has signed a unique ocean partnership agreement with China. Two of the world’s largest ocean economies will work together to improve the international governance of the oceans in all its aspects, including by combating illegal fishing and promoting a sustainable blue economy.

Chile enacts historic ban on commercial use of plastic bags, first in the Americas, because a plastic bag takes seconds to make; is used for less than half an hour, and then takes 400 years to biodegrade.